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Saturday, April 04, 2009

This & That, and Crises Averted

No post about Dad yet. Look for that later this weekend.I don't have any idea where the Final Four is being held this weekend (I'm actually surprised I even know it is this weekend). I don't know who the four teams playing are. I don't know who the top seeds in the tournament were. I have not watched a single minute, let alone a full game, of any of March Madness. I have not watched a single minute, let alone a full game, of ANY basketball game this season. And you know what? I am SO okay with that! Basketball ranks as low as NASCAR and baseball in my "need to see" on TV. On the other hand, the Masters starts next week!!!You may have read the report within the last couple of days that 1 out of 10 Americans receives food stamps! What??? 1 out of 10? I am dumbfounded! Don't get me wrong--I don't mind the use of food stamps. I think it's a valuable and necessary social program. FOR THOSE WHO NEED IT. But 1 out of 10? I can almost guarantee that if I were in a group of 10 people, I would make less money than any of them, but applying for food stamps hasn't ever crossed my mind. Food stamps are meant for those who need them. 1 out of 10? Sure, there's corruption and fraud included, but even with that...1 out of 10? And I don't want to stereotype, but why is it that when I follow someone out of the store who has just used food stamps, they invariably load their groceries into the late model sports car or SUV? 1 out of 10? Am I missing something? Should I be signing up myself?I've found two great time-wasting sites to check out. Many of us of the "older" persuasion have grown up with LIFE Magazine. Known for years as one of the finest news/life/photo magazines around. The photography is renowned, and is generally regarded as some of the finest ever published (perhaps second only to National Geographic). I don't know how long it's been up, but you can now find LIFE online! Collections of thousands of their photographs. The famous and the obscure. You can do a word search, or a category search. And you can purchase some of the photographs. Hours and hours of fun! The other site I've mentioned before--hulu.com. Full TV episodes, interviews, and all sorts of fun stuff. Just as good as Alec Baldwin says it is! Both sites have been bookmarked for future reference!I can laugh about it now...

I was at the symphony office on Wednesday afternoon for a few minutes. As I'm walking out, I notice my flash drive sitting on the front counter. I didn't recall pulling it out, so it must have fallen out of my pocket and somebody just set it there. My flash drive isn't something that I necessarily want to have someone I know looking at. Sure, there's the symphony related files on there. But there might be pictures on there, too. Say, from my second night in Indy last November. Or this past week's OHNT pics (sometimes I draft OHNT from work...). Certainly not something I want the symphony people looking at. So, crisis averted. Or so I thought.

As I was getting ready for work on Thursday morning, I see that the flash drive is on the floor. I put it in my pocket, and what do I find? Another identical flash drive. Same brand, same color, same capacity. Yep...the one I picked up at the office wasn't really mine. A quick check showed that there were file names that meant nothing to me. I didn't dig any further, because that's just not what I do. I saw enough with the file names to know that it wasn't mine, and that was that. I didn't have time to get to the office again that day, but I knew I'd be seeing one of the volunteers at rehearsal that night. An older lady who plays violin is also a retired attorney and spends many hours a week in the office. I knew that she'd get it back to whomever it belonged. Turns out, after checking her pockets, that it was hers! So, crisis averted. Or so I thought.

I got a phone call just before leaving work on Friday. Caller ID says it's the symphony office. It was the nice retired attorney lady. Can you see where this is headed? Apparently, the flash drive I gave her was MINE. I swore I put them in different pockets to avoid this. Nope. She had mine, and I still had hers. I swung by the office to swap them, and on the drive over, various scenarios played through my head. She opened up the OHNT folder and fainted and the EMTs were furiously trying to revive her. Or she copied all the contents and passed them around to the rest of the staff. Or she was so shocked and disgusted by what she saw that she immediately deleted everything on it. I walk in the door, and she's talking with another attorney who is involved in the money side of things. None of us really say a word to each other. She and I just extended both our hands--one with the wrong drive, and the other one, open and ready to grab our respective property. I said thanks, and so did she, and I'm not sure, but I think she gave me a smile. To my relief, the police weren't outside waiting for me at the door.

All my files are intact, and I suppose I could go in and see when the last time was that they were opened, but I'm not sure I really want to know. I'd like to think that she respected my privacy as much as I respected hers. Obviously, there were no EMTs, or police, or maternal admonishments, so I think she did. But I'll never really know. Moral of the story? Password protect your flash drive!